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	Top European Clerics Defend Benedict By Daniel J. Wakin The New York Times April 1, 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/02/world/europe/02pope.html ROME — Several prominent European churchmen on Thursday denounced suggestions that Pope Benedict XVI was anything but a vigorous defender of victims of priestly sexual abuse, arguing that the pope should not be criticized for his oversight of such cases. “Deceitful accusations have been leveled against he who has done, and does, so much to remove ‘every filth’ ” from the priesthood, Cardinal Angelo Scola, the patriarch of Venice, said at a Mass there. Cardinal Scola, a major figure in the Italian church, repeated the pope’s words that pedophilia was “an odious crime but also a scandalously grave sin.” The comments came as the Roman Catholic Church gears up for Easter Sunday, the holiest day on the Christian calendar, and were made on Holy Thursday, a day dedicated to the reaffirmation of priestly vows and to the bond between a bishop and his priests. The comments emerged after weeks of extensive reporting on sexual abuse in the church by the news media and increasing anger among many European Catholics about bishops’ handling of abuse cases. The pope celebrated a Mass in the morning for his priests and bishops in St. Peter’s Basilica and an evening Mass at St. John Lateran in Rome, where he carried out the tradition of washing the feet of 12 priests. Benedict did not refer to the scandal in his homilies. Speculation has circulated that the pope may do so on Good Friday, when he takes part in the Way of the Cross ceremonies at the Colosseum, observing Jesus’s final hours and his crucifixion. Shortly before Benedict became pope in 2005, he used meditations he wrote for the Way of the Cross services to denounce “filth” in the church. On Wednesday, Cardinal William J. Levada, an American who leads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, provided a lengthy defense of Benedict’s record on handling abuse cases in an interview with The New York Times and a statement posted on the Vatican Web site. He singled out The Times for what he called unfair coverage, addressing specifically a report about a Wisconsin priest who abused up to 200 deaf boys from 1950 to 1974. The pope has also come under scrutiny for his actions as archbishop of Munich and Freising when a pedophile priest there was transferred back into ministry in 1980. On Thursday, other cardinals joined the fray. The archbishop of Warsaw, Kazimierz Nycz, faulted news organizations for “targeting the whole church, targeting the pope,” The Associated Press reported. “To that we must say no in the name of truth and in the name of justice,” Archbishop Nycz said. Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, the leader of the Austrian church, told reporters on Thursday, “I can say with certainty that, in his role as chief of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he had a very clear line of not covering up, but clearing up.” Reports of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, after a rampant scandal in 2002 and 2003 in the United States, have gathered a storm in Europe in recent months. Cases have emerged in bulk in the pope’s native Germany and in Ireland, and to some extent in the Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria. While suggestions that the pope should assume any responsibility for the scandals has prompted angry reaction from prelates, at the same time bishops have been speaking up to denounce the transgressions of some of their priests. They are following the lead of Benedict, who expressed “shame and remorse” and partly blamed bishops in a letter issued last month that was directed at the church in Ireland, where the scandal has been most widespread in Europe. The chairwoman of We Are Church, a movement of Catholics seeking changes in church policy, said some of the European bishops seemed sincere, while “maybe other ones” wanted just to appease those protesting the abuse. “At least it’s important that they are reacting and pretending not to hide,” said the official, Raquel Mallavibarrena, in Madrid. Elsewhere, the Swiss bishops conference issued a statement recognizing that it had “undervalued the breadth of the phenomenon.” It said leaders of dioceses and religious orders had made “errors,” and asked for pardon. The Swiss bishops also encouraged victims to report abuse to the authorities.
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